SCHOOL DISTRICT NOTIFIES STUDENTS AND TEACHERS OF POTENTIAL CHANGE TO “LAST HIRED, FIRST FIRED”

Superior Court Scheduled to Hold Final Hearing in January

Los Angeles—The current practice of laying off teachers solely on the basis of seniority may change in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) in response to a legal challenge regarding a concentration of Reductions-In-Force (RIFs) at three middle schools when positions were eliminated District-wide for the previous two school years due to budget cuts.

Prior to a final hearing, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William F. Highberger ordered the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to provide information about the proposed settlement by today to students and teachers who could be affected by the change.

What the settlement would do: If classroom teachers must be laid off, certain schools would be exempt from layoffs and reductions would be more evenly spread throughout the remaining schools.In essence, the pain and disruption of layoffs would be spread more evenly throughout the District instead of decimating the faculty at one school, while sparing all teachers at another school based on how long they had been with LAUSD.

A special notice is being provided to teachers and students at the three middle schools—Gompers, Liechty and Markham---at the center of the lawsuit.During the recent rounds of teacher layoffs, those schools lost the majority of their teachers. The settlement would exempt 45 struggling campuses from teacher layoffs as long as those schools were making academic progress.

In addition to distributing notices in English and Spanish at schools, the District has posted the information in multiple languages at www.lausd.net.